Female stars are called by lawyers after being set as emergency contacts by strangers: they can protect their rights according to law, and the lending platform should verify their identity and willingness

Recently, a Taiwan actress was set as an emergency loan contact by a stranger, and was harassed by collectors.

According to media reports, Taiwan actress Liu Leyan said that when a stranger named Zhou borrowed money from Du Xiaoman, her emergency contact left her name and phone number. Due to Zhou's failure to repay the debt, Du Xiaoman frequently called and sent short messages to her, asking her to remind Zhou to repay. Although Liu Leyan has repeatedly stated that she does not know Zhou, debt collectors still harass her day and night.

On May 14, Liu Leyan said in an interview with the media that the incident happened in December last year. After she made several complaints on the network platform, "the other party said that they would not harass me anymore". But at the same time, she also worried, "Fortunately, I have two or three million fans on the Internet. I have been shaking it (video of Du Xiaoman harassing), watermelons, Baidu, and have been posting microblogs to fight it to the end, and Du Xiaoman let me go. But if it is an ordinary person without fans, what do you think he should do? How to get rid of this harassment?"

▲ Screenshot of Liu Leyan's Weibo

Red Star News reporter noticed that as an Internet financial platform, Du Xiaoman is mainly engaged in credit, wealth management and other businesses. For a long time, people have been claiming on the social platform that they are somehow the emergency contact person of DuXiaoMan loan, which can't be bothered by.

On May 16, Red Star News reporter called the official customer service of Du Xiaoman to inquire about this matter. The customer service personnel said that the platform system will review the comprehensive situation of the borrower when lending, and "only some emergency contacts will verify by phone". As reported in the report, if the emergency contact person does not know the borrower, the party concerned can report to the customer service, and they will send a commissioner to verify and confirm and give a reply.

The customer service personnel also said that if the loan is overdue, Du Xiaoman has the right to entrust a third-party organization to collect and provide the personal information agreed in the loan agreement to the third-party organization for collection.

In addition, another Du Xiaoman staff member told the reporter that the situation of being set as an emergency contact by a stranger might be caused by the operator's second number release, or personal information disclosure, "because everyone's problems will be different, what's the specific score? We will deal with them in a timely manner."

Then, does the lending platform have the right to collect emergency contacts?

Zhao Liangshan, a senior partner of Shaanxi Hengda Law Firm and a well-known public welfare lawyer, said that the purpose of setting up an emergency contact person is to know the real situation of the borrower in time by contacting the emergency contact person in case of an accident. In principle, the identity and willingness of the emergency contact person should be verified. However, the loan company used the emergency contact person in a generalized way when dunning, which even "alienated" the meaning of the emergency contact person, obviously deviated from the original intention of the emergency contact person, and thus violated the legitimate rights and interests of the emergency contact person. In this regard, emergency contacts can safeguard their rights according to law.

The reporter noted that on May 15, the China Internet Finance Association issued the Guidelines for Internet Finance Post loan Collection Business (hereinafter referred to as the Guidelines). The Guidelines stipulates that "financial institutions and third-party collection institutions shall only collect from the debtor, not from the contact person." "If the contact person explicitly refuses the request of the collection person or requires the collection person not to contact again, the collection person shall not contact again."

Fu Jian, director of Henan Zejin Law Firm, believes that the Guidelines, issued by the Financial Association, are self-discipline documents of the industry and have legal force between the industry's self-discipline management organization and its members. If lending platforms and collection agencies join the association, they will be subject to restrictions and supervision. "As the client, the lending platform has the regulatory responsibility and should inform the collection institution of reasonable and legal collection to avoid unnecessary legal disputes."

In the case of being wrongly filled as an emergency contact, Fu Jian said that the party concerned could complain to the lending platform, request to delete their identity information and stop the telephone collection. If the collection has not stopped, the party concerned may complain to the financial management department about the lending platform and the collection company, or file a civil lawsuit.

Red Star Journalist Luo Danni Intern born in Xindu

Edited by He Xianfeng and Wei Kongming